Latest from The Jeweler's Bench

You have just started to wear the most beautiful and embellished ring you have ever owned - often your engagement ring or wedding band - and you find that the skin under your ring is raw, red and painful. What is going on? Are you allergi...

It is always a joy to design a custom piece for our clients here at Alix & Company. Behind the scenes in the workshop section of our store our designer and goldsmiths are constantly collaborating to bring people’s dream jewelry into reality. Summer Sunrise is a delightful necklace we built for a man who wanted to celebrate his wife's birthday in a special way.

We start with a detailed conversation with the client about the piece they envision. Then we add our expertise about materials, strength, structure, and cost to come up with an appealing design that will suit the lifestyle of the person who wears it.

In this case, the husband wanted to surprise her with a lush necklace that would match a ruby and yellow sapphire ring they bought from us many years ago. Janet Alix scoured the available stones and developed a pattern with a repeating design of inset rubies alternating with bright orange and yellow jelly opals accenting the big hessonite garnet drop.

With the design perfected our goldsmiths went to work building it–conferring regularly with the designer. It’s a time-consuming process as everything down to the links on the chain shown below were hand-made by our goldsmith Maya.